I was invited to a small jam session with friends. Throughout the week, I felt the long hours of learning and the short hours of sleep were pregnant with one golden evening of music.
The first thing I noticed was the dim yellow light. The reflection of a single yellow bulb on the shiny wooden guitar flickered as the owner orchestrated the acoustics. Bottles of beer and packets of chips stood guard against untimely interruptions. It was a stage perfectly set.
Even as the stage warmed up, the first few songs did not sync well. The vocals had to be aligned with the acoustics. Suddenly, the guitarist shouted, “It has to be a proper proposal document. A music proposal.” The men who had been trained to write reports of performance results understood the importance of synchronization.
Chords and notes form the grammar. The language of music requires more than rote. It requires more than rational abilities. Math and engineering deem everything other than the mental faculty a liability that should be removed with extra ergonomic furniture and bigger headphones. Today, on the other hand, was a festival of senses.
It struck me full force then — the ability of men to create instruments of music. The sum total of skill and concentration of one luthier was the protagonist for the evening. The precision with which the guitar maker had intended the vibrations to come out and had succeeded made me question my own dedication to precision as an engineer. I wondered how I had been exposed to more synchronization and accuracy in a night of music than in a semester of engineering.
Music is not unlike computer networks. Musical instruments are not unlike computers. Guitars talk in vibrations through air. Computers talk in vibrations through electrical signals. The former recognizes vibrations as chords and notes, and the latter understands bits and bytes. Just like computer protocols were made to make sense of the electrical vibrations, a whole new language of chords and notes were made to communicate with music.
“It all comes down to math, man. That’s where it goes down to,” one of the musicians said. Being a newbie in music, I thought it was intriguing how he made sense of that statement. He worshipped his guitar, spending thick and thin alongside it. He dreamed of making a guitar of his own one day.
These were engineers. These were not professional musicians. They took time out of their weekly schedules to sit down and jam. Some were reviving old interests, while some were in their regular hours of solitude.
It took me some time to realize that even as an engineer, I see more science in the arts than I would have cared to notice. It only takes a good evening of music and men who are dedicated to it.